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Modern art paintings are an integral branch of the modernist movement in art. Unlike the renaissance which lay an equal emphasis on the plastic and the visual arts, and the postmodern movement which started and developed largely in the fields of architecture and installation arts, modernism used painting as its most important vehicle of representation.
Modern art paintings include works produced between 1860 and 1970. However, the period around the two World Wars is considered to be the time of High Modernism. A number of movements emerged in Europe and aligned themselves with the modern movement in art and painting during this time. Impressionism, the first big movement in modern painting, developed in the hands of Renoir, Manet and Monet. Gauguin and Van Gogh, on the other hand, represented alternative points of view. Their works were poised in the disturbing and fascinating margins of sophistication and primitivism; with ethnic art influences like Japanese art prints and Egyptian art as major inspirations.
The Wars brought about a radical transition in the Western way of thinking, giving rise to ideas of nihilism, existentialism and Freudian psychoanalysis.
In modernist painting, experimentation replaced obedience to academic norms as the watchword. Salvador Dali was the high priest of the Surrealist movement, which directly development from the Dadaist school of thought. At the same time, a return to primary forms of geometric simplicity took the form of Cubism. Pablo Picasso, Kandinsky and Chagall in their own ways revolutionizing the art world with his amazing genius and technical virtuosity, adapting modes of abstraction, expressionism and cubism.
Modern painting not only experimented with themes of art, but with art techniques as well. A large number of new and unheard of techniques were being regularly introduced by the artists. They used objects of everyday use as materials for their art, and involved cut and paste and multiple perspectives in their works.
Modern art paintings continue to amaze and intrigue us with their daring spirit of experimentation and ideological rigor. It is the direct source of inspiration for contemporary painting.
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